I hope Michael Carrick plays well in Berlin.
Tonight is Carrick’s 15th cap and he’s 27. He always plays football, home or away, whether you are winning or losing, he keeps passing the ball. In international football, keeping the ball is essential to success.
England’s main men tonight will be club captains John Terry and Gareth Barry. Nine regulars are missing, including Theo Walcott, who dislocated his right shoulder in training yesterday
Long-term, Fabio Capello has three missions : to qualify, to maximise, to win the World Cup.
By maximise I mean: make England greater than the sum of their parts. Capello has to create an efficient, realistic style of play that uses our best qualities and is bombproof in the sense that an injury to a key player is something the team can overcome.
Incapable of welding a team together, Sven depended on three or four icons, and discovered Rooney. Then Rooney was injured by Jorge Andrade in Portugal. When Rooney went off in that quarter-final, it was as if we suddenly had seven players. It was as if four players had gone off. Fabio wants to create a team that can survive such a loss.
Having recently maximised the natural belligerence of Rooney, Heskey, Terry, Gerrard and Ashley Cole, and shaped that belligerence into an effective formula, Capello now finds himself playing a friendly in Berlin with a B-team of nice guys.
The starting X1 might include Stewart Downing or it could be something like this : James ; Johnson, Curtis Davies, Terry, Bridge; Wright-Phillips, Carrick, Barry, Ashley Young; Bent, Defoe.
In training, Under-21 defender Michael Mancienne has been employed as a right back, which is a problem position for Capello. Bent and Agbonlahor are a bit similar, while Bridge, Carrick and Barry are among the nicest guys in football. When Wee Gordon Strachan was manager of Southampton he said Bridge was such a model pro he wouldn’t mind if his daughter married him. WGS may have been joking. I don’t know if he has a daughter.
Capello sees this as a chance to get to know some different players like Bent, Carrick, Curtis Davies and Agbonlahor.
There isn’t a lot of creativity but maybe Carrick can release Bent with a good pass.
In general, international football is about keeping the ball and having the right temperament.
Many players have talent but don’t have international temperament. Darren Anderton had the right temperament and was two-footed, so he could play against anybody, and in various roles. If Ashley Young had Anderton’s temperament, and could do for England what he does for Aston Villa, Capello would be ecstatic.
The other thing is : players who can play on their own. Attackers who can play on their own. England don’t train together very much, so they need at least one player who can get the ball, beat a couple of guys, and make something happen. Joe Cole does that.
When Trevor Francis played for Nottingham Forest, he played better for England because Forest were a method team and Trevor was an improviser who could open up defences. Bent and Defoe can’t do that. Agbonlahor, a power player, can’t do that. He is more like Cyrille Regis. But Shaun Wright-Phillips is a bit like Trevor Francis He is England’s best player at losing a marker and spurting towards towards the box. Tonight he’s not playing against Lahm, who is injured, as is Ballack.
But, of course, SWP does his best work playing in Frank Lampard positions, not in tram-lines down the right flank. I’m sure Capello realises that.
Capello says: “I’m happy that I have this opportunity to see the strength in depth we possess. I’m happy because some players that have been playing very well in the Premier League can play in another very important game against a big team, and I can check the confidence and performance of these players. What I want to learn is a lot. I will be happy if some players play very well, like Walcott did in Croatia, and force their way into my thinking. “
England’s next qualifier is against Ukraine at Wembley on April 1. They warm up for that with a game against Slovakia on March 28. Let’s hope Theo Walcott is fit and available for those two games
Germany v England is on ITV1 at 8pm.
Scotland v Argentina is on Sky Sports 1 at 8pm.
Terry Butcher won’t shake the Hand of God. He has not forgiven. Neither have I. If you’re playing a World Cup quarter-final, and Maradona punches the ball into the net very craftily, in a way that he often did in practice games, by jumping with his clenched fist already up near his head, then the England players were bound to be very angry.
When I saw that in 1986, I was surprised that they played on. I was amazed that Butcher, Shilton, Fenwick and Sansom didn’t rip off their shirts and throw them on the ground and walk off the pitch. That’s what I would have done.